Natural Theology and the Christian Bible (2024)

The opening chapters of 1 Corinthians and its stark contrast between human and divine wisdom seem to anticipate Karl Barth's rejection of natural theology, and Barth haunts James Barr's major work on the Bible and natural theology, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (1994), which represents a sustained attack on Karl Barth's suspicion of natural theology. Barr is right to remind us that all theology (including Barth's) is a product of human culture. Whatever their protests about human wisdom and the transcendence of God over the natural world, biblical writers were attempting to understand God through analogies with the natural world or through the culture of which they were a part.

In this chapter, I am deliberately playing with several approaches to the meaning of nature and natural, including both the explicit statements in the Bible about the natural world as a witness to the divine but also the ways in which human relations, culture, and convention inform the biblical writings and the importance of the material world as the arena of salvation history (Bockmuehl 2000). Notwithstanding the attempts to distinguish between revealed theology and natural theology, the ‘signs’ of God's activity come through nature in all its diversity mediated and understood by human minds, however much those minds might be viewed as enlightened by the divine.

I first of all consider how the biblical authors write about nature and God's relationship to it and then look at the function of nature and the natural world in the Bible, and their peculiar role in apprehending the divine. This reveals the centrality of nature, in particular human nature, as the key mode of theological understanding. Whatever the biblical writers may have said about their relationship between themselves as the people of God and nature and culture, they were deeply immersed in the culture of their day, albeit articulating a distinctive approach. In particular, I will consider the early Christian conviction about the way in which God ‘spoke’ through a human being (to paraphrase the opening of the Letter to the Hebrews), and is believed to be present in particular patterns of human relating. Also, in the process of interpretation, we can discern the way in which nascent Christian theology, for example, in the parables of Jesus uses analogy between nature and human affairs. The other issue considered in the second part of the chapter is the central part the material world plays in biblical eschatology.

What the Biblical Writers Say about Nature

While in the collection of literature loosely described as the Wisdom Literature (e.g. Proverbs in the Bible and Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha) experience and consideration of the way of the world serve as a basis for determining human behaviour and relationship with God, elsewhere in the Bible there is a widespread suspicion of nature as a vehicle of divine revelation. Such suspicion is rooted in the reaction of emerging Judaism to surrounding culture. The Jews were apprehensive of the idolatry that results when nature is identified with the divine (Isaiah 40:18–20; 44:9–20). In the New Testament Paul exhorts the Galatians not to be taken in by beings which are not by nature gods:

Paul's words suggest that there is a qualitative difference between God the creator and other parts of the creation, whether spiritual, animal, or material. This is a theme that runs throughout the Hebrew Bible's repudiation of idolatry: Israel should not be taken in by the urbane religion of Canaan, firmly rooted in a sophisticated way of life and in the habits and genius of a particular place. By contrast, the rudimentary Hebrew religion is attached neither to place nor image. ‘I am who I am’ goes before a group of refugees, appears to refuse to sanctify arrangements in surrounding society, and is not to be identified with nature. Yet the pantheon of Canaanite gods and the religious practices of surrounding cultures permeated Israel's life, however much the biblical writers came to repudiate it. Moreover, as we can see from the Psalms, and the mythological language elsewhere, links between God and nature are frequent, with storms and other extraordinary phenomena of nature being construed as vehicles of divine revelation—though occasionally, not, as is the case with Elijah in 1 Kings 19:12: not in the wind or earthquake or fire, but in ‘a sound of sheer silence’ as the NRSV puts it!

The creation account in Genesis 1 presents God as the one who brings order out of chaos and thus offers a blueprint for the distinctions and sense of holiness which are endemic in biblical religion. Psalms 104 and 19 demonstrate Jewish interest in the creation as a sign of divine providence and in the witness of nature to the divine creator. Psalm 104 lauds God as sustainer of the universe, and the provider of the animal and human world with food:

In Psalm 19 the psalmist writes that there is no need of words to laud God's glory, as the creation is itself a living testimony to it:

Yet Psalm 19 is not simply about the creation as witness to the divine glory. Precise observation of the created world is a key part not only of the learned tradition of the wise but is also essential for Jewish piety, with the calculation of the new moon and Sabbath being central to the regulating of life and the celebration of divinely sanctioned feasts—something else which is reflected in the opening text of the Book of Genesis. Psalm 19 is not only about the creation as a witness to the divine glory: its abrupt move to discussion of the law of the Lord as the centre of life of the righteous is a juxtaposition which is crucial to much in the Bible. Thus, it is no accident that Sabbath observance is central to Genesis 1, and obedience to the divine command central to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Meditation on creation is never an end in itself. Indeed, probing questions posed by nature and experience, as we find in Job and 2 Esdras, lead to only one theological answer: the inability of the human mind to understand the divine purposes or to comprehend the discrete elements of the world and to move from this to some kind of coherent theology. The Book of Job is testimony to the limitations of natural theology, and, as is evident in both Job and 2 Esdras, the human attempts to gain understanding have to be complemented by divine or angelic revelations which serve to stress the incomprehensibility of the divine and the poverty of the human intellect (Job 38–42:6), the ultimate triumph of the divine promises (2 Esdras 11–13), and the validation of obedience rather than knowledge as the necessary response of humanity.

Chapter 13 of the Wisdom of Solomon, written just before the Common Era, describes the ease with which humans ignorant of God misinterpreted the evidence of nature and ‘deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world’ (Wisdom 13:2). Thereby, they worship the created rather than the creator. The author of Wisdom admits that they may err, but do so in their search for God, though that is not an excuse:

Following these lines and echoing a similar passage in Isaiah (44:9–20), there comes a sarcastic critique of idolatry.

We also find this kind of polemic against idolatry in the New Testament. Thus the Paul of Acts in Acts 17 sets out to explain to the Athenians their underlying desire for the divine: ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you’ (Acts 17:22–3). This is an apologetic strategy which would flourish in the second century, and beyond, as early Christian apologists explored the unseen activity of God in humankind and in culture outside the history of Israel. Similar arguments to these are found in the opening chapter of Romans. Paul's Hellenistic-Jewish background suggests there is a degree of human knowledge of God, albeit imperfect and capable of being misdirected in its goals. Such knowledge is not reserved for some elect but is the fulfilment of the divine promises for the whole of humanity.

The Greek word physis is little used in the New Testament, and many commentators think that this might be a deliberate rejection of the natural theology of the Hellenistic tradition. Nevertheless, there are appeals to nature as the teacher of right conduct, a form of argument which has been central to much natural theology. In Romans 1 ‘unnatural’ sexual relations are seen as a sign of divine judgement on an idolatrous world: ‘For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations [physiken chresin] for unnatural [para physin]’ (Romans 1:26). In Romans 2:14 in the context of his argument to demonstrate the need of all humanity for messianic redemption, Paul refers to the righteous Gentiles who though they do not have the Law ‘do by nature what the Law requires’:

Elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, Paul characterizes ‘conscience’ as an important part of the human ability to discern right conduct, however much that conscience needs to be informed (1 Corinthians 8:7, 12). Paul's argument in Romans 1–3, demonstrating the extent of human culpability, is based on the assumption that, whether or not humanity has the Torah, men and women have the innate capability to know what is required of them. Indeed, Paul even uses language reminiscent of Jeremiah 31:31–34 and calls it a law written on the heart. All this is a reminder of the importance of that strand in both Jewish and Christian theology which suggests that man and woman created in God's image are not devoid of moral sensibility. So, though Moses legislated ‘because of the hardness of human hearts’ (Mark 10:5) the Law was given not to totally uncomprehending humanity but to men and women in whom the light of the divine image could burn strongly (a theme which was taken up and used in early Christian apologetics by means of the Logos doctrine).

In 1 Corinthians 11:14 in the middle of Paul's argument in favour of sexual differentiation and male superiority he appeals to nature: ‘does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it brings dishonour to him, but if a woman wears long hair it is her pride’. This is then backed up by biblical support, by reference to a hierarchy of mimesis:

Perhaps, more surprisingly, given his tirade against the wisdom of the world at the beginning of the letter, Paul is appealing here to what is in effect cultural convention, just as in 1 Corinthians 5, when it serves his interests, he appeals to pagan culture as well as nature in a situation where he wants to shame his opponents.

Throughout the Bible there is a recognition that human reason can find in the natural world signs of the glory of God. Observation of nature, along with observations of human relating, the pitfalls and advantages of different patterns of behaviour, offer a paradigm for understanding providence and what makes for the providential ordering of the world and people in it. This recognition is particularly evident in the Book of Proverbs and the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, in the Apocrypha. Of course, this was particularly linked with the fear of God whose expectations of humans are outlined in the Law of Moses. Thus, good order in society and the revealed wisdom to Moses coincide. But alongside this overlap of reason and revelation, there is throughout the Bible what the writers regard as a prophetic charisma, an ability to speak in a way which contrasts with convention and brings insight into situations, whether personal or political. As we shall see in the case of Amos and Jeremiah, ordinary objects and events can be invested with significance which many may miss.

Theological Discourse and human Relating, Visionary Imagination, and Eschatology

Biblical writings rarely offer an argument for God's existence based on appeal to the natural world. There are passages about the natural world in relation to God (as in Genesis 1) but never as part of a sustained argument to demonstrate the probability of God's existence. Even as regards those passages we have examined which use the natural world as evidence for God's existence, as in Wisdom of Solomon 13 and Romans 1–2, these are part of the apologetic tradition which serves to demonstrate the inadequacies of human epistemology and warns against the human tendency to worship ‘nature not the God of nature’.

What we find in the Bible is the story of a tiny segment of humanity, and the account of their relations with God in history. That emphasis is important. Biblical writings testify to the divine being discerned through the ordinary course of nature, whether that be the physical world, or human intercourse and the various modes of human engagement. The focus of attention in the Bible is the human in the midst of the natural world, human life together, and how and why it is that fallible human beings need to begin over and over again the process of discerning what makes for their peace.

The Bible's different literary genres, whether in terms of complete texts or individual sentences, are rooted in human speech patterns, and evince ways of subverting the outlook of humans, whose capacity for habit and domestication require such subversion because they fail to understand and act aright. The biblical texts are effective texts, therefore. They persuade, disturb, and elicit praise, a sense of awe or injustice, guilt as well as confidence. Their purpose is to awaken people to life reflecting the divine image, by drawing readers into the dynamic of communication as to what that might mean. The Bible is full of analogies to nature and human life, and there is much use of familiar tropes, in order to enable the formation of people who may better reflect the nature of God. Ironically, it is those very chapters of 1 Corinthians advocating the superiority of the divine wisdom which contain some of the most obvious examples of human wisdom. Paul uses various rhetorical devices, techniques of persuasion, sarcasm, irony, and, in general, exploits the whole panoply of rhetorical devices to make sure his words have their full effect (Betz 1979; Mitchell 1991, 2010). They are techniques widespread in the rhetorical conventions of his day.

The understanding of God, especially in the synoptic Gospels, is rarely given in speculations about the nature of divinity, but frequently in familiar stories from everyday life. The Sermon on the Mount is full of appeals to nature, about the rain falling on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45), about the beauty of the flowers, the provision for the birds, dealing with anxiety (Matthew 6:26–33), and the appeal to common sense in settling disputes (Matthew 5:23–26; Luke 14:28–33). The origin of Christian theology lies less with grand themes and systems than with analogies from nature and human life. A recurring theme of the synoptic Gospels is the Kingdom of God, but once we have read the Gospels we are left in as much uncertainty about exactly what is meant by this phrase. The critical consensus concerning its meaning is that it relates to the imminence of a future ‘this-worldly’ state of affairs which contrasts with the present time and which will be characterized by the fulfilment of the divine purposes. But nowhere do we find any neat encapsulation of this in the form of a utopian programme. Indeed, at the heart of the major theological texts of Christianity we find not exposition but resort to analogy requiring hearers and readers to make sense of the juxtaposition of various different kinds of ancient circ*mstances to help grasp what the Kingdom of God is like.

Parables are less frequent in the Gospel of John but we find a similar attempt to involve the reader or hearer in a process of epistemological transformation, which disorientates before it illumines and leads to an act of faith. That is a commitment to engagement with the ambiguity of the words, persistence with the interpretation of which may enable another way of seeing, and point to other levels of reality and ways of being. The riddling sayings and discourses of Jesus either captivate and open the eyes or otherwise drive people away in puzzlement. Nicodemus becomes typical as readers of the Gospel share his sense of bewilderment (Meeks 1972). The natural image of birth is a way of comparing the evolution of comprehension and ethical transformation. Nicodemus is a teacher of the Jews (John 3:1). To use Blake's words he needs the ‘door of his perception cleansed’ by the riddles and puzzles with which he is confronted to discern the Infinite embodied in his midst (cf. Blake 1988: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 14). This will enable him to begin to move from bemusem*nt to a better grasp of the nature of things.

Encounter with God and with that which merits the epithet ‘theological’ in the Bible are a mixture of intellectual and practical engagements involving both the theologically freighted significance of certain persons and actions, and the use of rhetorical and other literary devices to enable a transformation of perception of that which has been received.

Theological Discourse and Human Relating

Whatever the metaphysical expositions of Christian theology as it has developed, the ordinary (literally and metaphorically) has mediated understanding of God. Thus, even when we consider central tenets of Christianity (and indeed of Judaism) they are focussed on beliefs about ordinary lives, bodies, and events in the material world. To come face to face with God, said the author of the Gospel of John, meant meeting an apparently ordinary human person. ‘Is this not Joseph's son?’, the crowd asks in John 6:42. This is what the doctrine of the incarnation is about, not about some overwhelming supernatural revelation. To see the human Jesus is to see God and, derived from that, reading about him is to be enabled to meet that figure so central for early Christian experience (John 14:9; 1:18). Understanding more about that figure meant telling of his actions as signifiers, called semeia rather than merely recounting supernatural thaumasia (‘miracles’ or ‘wonders’, a word only rarely used in the New Testament). Those signs may be a first step (John 10:38 and 14:11) but are not in themselves the proof. God speaks through a human being and through agents of that human being. Faith in an ordinary human person, not sight of a supernatural being or event, is what counts: ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’ (John 20:29).

Many of the central tenets of Christianity are not based on a supernatural revelation mediated by an angel, or other divine being to a privileged individual, even though, say, in the Book of Revelation, in the New Testament, we have a mode of revelation which is, at first sight, similar to the kind of claim made about Muḥammad's reception of the Qur’ān. ‘At first sight’ because John's words in the Apocalypse express what he had seen; he is not a channel of divine speech (the letters to the angels of seven churches apart). He bears witness to what lies beyond the text, therefore, as the divine is borne witness to approximately in fallible human words describing his visionary experience (of which more below). In Jewish tradition too, Moses was regarded both as a legislator inspired by God, and a channel of the oracles of God whose personal contribution was kept to a minimum (Lierman 2004). The Jewish tradition, however, never set these words in themselves as special and the debates about the content of religion in the rabbinic tradition did not focus on the words, so much as the ongoing ability to move beyond them to discern through the words the nature of the obligation in the present ever new contexts of life.

One of the things that emerges out of the New Testament, therefore, is that words are not the only, or even the prime, theological medium. Of course, the New Testament consists of words but they are words which bear witness to God's communication in the form of a person. That sense of the divine being borne witness to, through human action and appropriate mutual engagement, is found in several places, and is, arguably, central to the issue that Paul would have the Corinthians face up to. In 1 Corinthians Paul seems to be addressing groups who regarded themselves as elite because of their knowledge, their language, or other claims to status, and who ignored what it meant to be embodied persons relating one to another. In one of the most famous passages in the New Testament he explicitly contrasts a community which prizes skills in language, which ends up fragmenting, with a community based on charity, which is the very bond of peace: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and yet have no love, I were even as sounding brass: and as a tinkling cymbal’ (1 Corinthians 13:1, in William Tyndale's translation). Paul deals with the issue of dissension by underlining the way in which the practice of human relating is the test of any talk about, or to, God. Paul demands that attention is given to the way in which language is used and subordinates this to the practice of charity as the necessary context and presupposition of theology. Language shaped by the practice of love and vulnerability is a very good commentary on what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians. Or, in the words of 1 John, theology is not just in word and speech but deed and truth also (1 John 3:18). It is a very natural activity, and none more so than that described in 1 John where relating to God means relating to one's brother (or sister): ‘the one who does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen’ (1 John 4:20). The stuff of ordinary life is the necessary vehicle of the understanding of, and practice of theology. It is natural human life lived (and even died) and transformed by God that reveals who God is. If we are looking for God, therefore, the focus is on the human as the peculiar vehicle of the divine.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in two passages in the Gospel of Matthew, 18:15–20 and 25:31–45. Matthew 18 is the paradigmatic passage in the Gospels dealing with forgiveness of sins. 18:15 is about addressing conflict, expressing it rather than concealing it. It is in this kind of activity that God is present, and something of divine significance takes place within such reconciling work: ‘Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’ (Matthew 18:19–20). The practice is paralleled in the line in the Lord's Prayer ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sin against us.’ The process of conflict resolution, a natural way of relating, therefore, according to this passage, guarantees the divine presence.

It is of a piece with what we find elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew—the divine being encountered in specific actions. At the climax of the eschatological discourse the Last Judgement is described (Matthew 25:31–45), and compared to a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats. The criteria of judgement, to the surprise of both those who turn out to be righteous and those who turn out to be wicked, are not theological but ethical: ‘inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren you have done it to me’ (Matthew 25:40). We need not worry now about the identity of the brethren (is it a reference to Christian disciples or is it all the poor, the naked, and the destitute?). The point is that acts of charity done to the ‘least of these’ turn out to be of ultimate theological significance, and the divide between the natural and supernatural is not as great as one might have thought. Similarly, echoing Genesis 18:2, Hebrews 13:2 commends friendship to strangers, for one may thereby entertain angels unawares.

Relating to, and experience of, God also were believed to come through interpretation and the application of words, especially the interpretation of the Bible. There is a famous passage in an early collection of rabbinic sayings, Pirke Aboth, 3:9 in which we read:

This parallels the sentiments of Jesus from Matthew 18:20 already mentioned.

Visionary Imagination

What it means to be occupied in studying the words of Torah is beautifully evoked by the writer of Ecclesiasticus:

Here the possibility of new insight as a result of knowledge of the past is acknowledged. Penetrating scriptural subtleties often involves an exercise of imagination, and it is the exercise of imagination which best helps us understand those charismatic moments described in the Bible as supernatural events when prophets and seers discern deeper things about the world through dreams, visions, and moments of insight, when connections are made between objects in the natural world and the human situation. So, related to this process of exercising the imagination are the dreams, auditions, and visions that offer another way of unsettling the complacent, pointing them to different kinds of realities and behaviours. Jeremiah saw the branch of an almond tree and a boiling cauldron (Jeremiah 1:11–13), and Amos, among other things, a plumb line and basket of fruit (Amos), and all become vehicles of God's prophetic word. Mary Carruthers has shown how in antique and medieval readings of the Bible there was a creative process of imaginative engagement. Such meditative practice, she argues, was a craft of imagination which opened up the possibility of an interweaving of biblical allusions and personal context to effect an engagement with scripture which yielded new meaning by a process of spontaneous interconnection, through meditative recall and visualization (Carruthers 1990, 1998).

A neat separation between exegesis and experience cannot do justice to what was going on in antiquity, where the reading of the Bible may have involved, as in the case of the interpretation of some prophetic passages like the opening chapter of Ezekiel, an empathetic identification and replication of the earlier prophet's experience:

For John of the Book of Revelation, and his visionary predecessors and contemporaries, the exegesis of a prophetic text such as Ezekiel was probably not just the subject of learned debate but also the catalyst for visionary experience through imaginative engagement (Halperin 1988; Rowland 1982, 2011; Scholem 1955; Rowland and Morray-Jones 2009). This is what we find in the tradition of visionary interpretation of Ezekiel, loosely referred to as ‘merkabah mysticism’.

Eschatology: The Natural World as the Arena for the Fulfilment of the Divine Purposes

We have just mentioned the major apocalyptic text of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, and suggested that the apocalyptic is about visionary insight. Yes, included in this is insight into the future of the cosmos and the nature of its institutions, but there is also the link between apocalypse and catastrophe. The Book of Revelation, in common with the rest of the Bible, is not about the description of the end of the world but its catharsis and its future as the arena of God's saving activity (Finamore 2009). The New Testament in particular has gained the reputation of being world-denying because of its eschatology. There is some truth in the world-denying elements, in the sense that there were strong counter-cultural elements at work, as there were in Judaism, but the idea that early Christians expected the winding up of human history and were not interested in the natural world is a view that flies in the face of the evidence of Christian texts down to the third century.

In the Johannine literature the cosmos is the object of God's love (John 3:16); it is the place to which the divine Logos came and where those who would follow the divine Logos are to carry on their work. But the cosmos can be the place which is under the domination of the ruler of this world (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4), as well as being the arena of God's saving activity. Existence in the cosmos is marked by ambivalence: the disciples of Jesus are to be in the world but not of it (John 17:14–15). The present order of the cosmos is not an unambiguous demonstration of the divine will, therefore. That which may constitute activity acceptable to God cannot merely mirror that of the cosmos and its culture. Rather, as we find in the Gospel of John, there is need for a change in both perspective and action; the biblical texts set out to redefine the cosmos's ideas of the way things are. So, for example, with kingship. Jesus’ kingship is not of this world (John 18:36). It does not reflect what is presumed to be the natural order of things where kings exercise authority, dominate, and fight. Here is a king who washes feet. He exercises a kingship not of this world, in the sense that it is defined by other criteria.

The form of the cosmos is not what it might be. As far as the author of 1 John is concerned, ‘we are already children of God, but it is not yet apparent what we shall be’. When the Messiah appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). Paul can write of seeing in a glass darkly with only glimpses of the perfection still awaited (1 Corinthians 13:12). Meanwhile the advice is not to be taken in by the cosmos as it is, especially, in its desires for property, status, and wealth (1 John 2:16 f.). But it is important to stress that in saying that early Christianity was ambivalent about the cosmos it was not because Christians believed that the end of the world was imminent. Rather its arrangements would be changed. Meanwhile in the midst of its present disorder it was important not to be conformed to the world as it was. Early Christian hopes for the future, for the first century and a half of Christianity's existence (and to which much of the New Testament bears witness), involved the coming of God's kingdom on earth, this world, this nature, not some otherworldly realm.

Ambivalence about the present arrangements, however, certainly did lead to negative words about God's destruction of the world and many of those in it, and yet there are also hints of an awareness of another dimension to the importance of creation. Thus, in the book of Revelation, in the midst of the torrent of images of upheaval, there emerges the comment that responsibility for the ecological disaster lies at the door of humanity: ‘The time has come for judgement on the destroyers of the earth’ (Revelation 11:18). This brief hint is a reminder that Revelation offers one of the best examples of a neglected theme in biblical theology which is particularly pertinent to the theme of this chapter: the divine covenant with the cosmos and not just with humans, or even one small group of humans, within it (Rowland 1998).

There are hints of covenant language in the imagery of Revelation 4:3 and 4 (cf. Exodus 19:16). This may not be the Sinai covenant, for, in addition, to the covenant theme related to Sinai, however, there is evidence for a parallel belief, a covenant between God and creation as a whole, not just a fraction of the world's population (Murray 1992). The opening chapter of Genesis depicts a harmonious order of the cosmos after the divine subjugation of natural and supernatural forces. A covenant is made with Noah after the flood signified with the ‘bow in the clouds on the day of rain’, to use Ezekiel's words (Genesis 9–16; Isaiah 54:9 f.). In Hosea the whole of the created world is linked to God's covenant:

The breach of what Robert Murray terms this ‘cosmic covenant’ is stated in Isaiah:

The effect of the breach is that ‘The land mourns’ (Hosea 4:1–3; Jeremiah 12:4; Joel 1:18–20). Right order in the world brings about prosperity (Isaiah 32:17: Joel 2:19–29; cf. Haggai 1:10–11), and right order in the human world reflects, and runs in parallel with, order in the cosmos. A just social order embracing the whole world, humans and animals is the vision of Isaiah 11. The messiah is a key figure in maintaining the stability of that order (Psalm 72 and 89). As the mediator between God and the people God's anointed one had a key role in mediating shalom. The apocalyptic imagery of Revelation evoking upheaval might be seen as a consequence of the fracture of the cosmic covenant, the repair of which is, it seems to me, the storyline of Revelation, as upheaval precedes heaven coming down to earth and the Paradise of God existing in the New Jerusalem in this world (Finamore 2009).

It is occasionally hinted that the followers of Jesus might have a special role in sharing the affliction and healing of the cosmos. In Romans 8, with its imagery of gestation and birth, the followers of the Messiah share the anguish of creation in travail, awaiting that moment when the divine purposes come to birth:

Those in Christ cannot shut themselves off from the natural world, therefore. Indeed, in some respects those who belong to Christ might be especially aware of the suffering and in some special way contribute to the birth of a new creation (Matthew 19:28–30; Colossians 1:24). In what are at best tantalizing glimpses, which lack coherent exposition, we find no miraculous escape from the world, nor a mystical identification with nature, but a perception of a threat to the cosmic order and a longing for it to be redeemed.

Conclusion

Paul writes of Satan hindering him (1 Thessalonians 2:18), or buffeting him, when he probably referred to missing a boat across the Aegean or suffering some physical or psychological ailment (2 Corinthians 12:7). Jeremiah saw branches of an almond tree and Amos a basket of fruit, both of which were vehicles of God's word. This may recall William Blake's point about the ability of the person of imagination to see angels in the sunshine, or ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower’ (1988: ‘Auguries of Innocence’). Here the natural is a signifier for the theological. William Blake was a younger contemporary of William Paley. At first sight Blake seems to be an implacable opponent of natural theology. Yet, in many ways his theology was every bit as ‘natural’ as William Paley's and encapsulates some of the major themes of this chapter. Blake is an example of a writer who held to a strong belief in the traces of the divine in humanity and indeed the whole of existence which became a signifier of the divine in a way akin to what Paul writes of in Romans 1. He did not neglect to note human fallibility in clouding the ability to discern the divine in the human nor the way humans prioritize sense experience at the expense of the imaginative. Blake anticipated much in modern theology in his insistence that human psychology and relating was the way in which one might speak meaningfully of God. Nature and the natural, with humanity as the means of understanding its significance, were for Blake the key to any language about God, nevertheless with this caveat: ‘Nature Teaches nothing of Spiritual Life but only of Natural Life’ (1988: Annotations to Boyd's Historical Notes on Dante). So, Blake was no romantic about nature: ‘Where man is not nature is barren’ (1988: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Plate 10). It is his fascination with men and women at the centre of the natural, the complexity of their psychologies, and the political processes which can both degrade and offer hope, that he sought to interpret in words and images. Like the biblical writers who exerted such a powerful influence on him, Blake was a keen supporter of extending human knowing to include the poetic and the imaginative and not allowing preoccupation with sense experience to be given a hegemonic place (1988: There is No Natural Religion version B; Rowland 2010: 6, 28, 52–5). The divine discerned through the imagination was less for him an outside, ‘supernatural’ influence, than a neglected dimension of human experience, and it is the key to the understanding of the image of God in humanity, as he put it in these deceptively simple words:

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